Iraq's loose ends may unravel

Just three months away from regaining power, Iraq's main sects are spiralling towards civil war. Paul McGeough reports from Baghdad.

So what to do now? The powerful spiritual leadership of Iraq's majority Shiites this week was insistent that the interim constitution that Washington had nursed to the table for Iraqi signatures was, in fact, an interim "interim constitution" that would have to be rewritten.

The US occupation authorities claimed the charter as a victory and rushed on. But when the next step was identified as forming an interim government, officials greeted media questions with we-don't-know shrugs of the shoulders.

Shiite opposition has already derailed US plans for an American-style round of local caucuses of hand-picked "notables" to appoint the country's interim administration - to function between June 30, when it is to return control to the Iraqis, and national elections for the legitimate government, to be held by the end of January. But at a news conference on Tuesday, Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor said the US wanted the squabbling 25-man Iraqi Governing Council to seek help from the United Nations and to devise its own plan. The most likely options are to extend the life of the council, an American-appointed body most Iraqis don't trust, or to try to add to its membership to change its narrow representation of Iraq as a three-cornered sectarian contest - Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

The fraught nature of that contest, which is edging towards civil war in post-Saddam Iraq, is underscored by the ducking of critical issues in the interim constitution in a way that denied all corners what they wanted - but gave them each a veto over the others. British Iraq expert Toby Dodge described it to The Guardian as a US victory that has been gained at the expense of "clarity, certainty and even stability".

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, spiritual leader of the Shiites, cast great doubt on the interim constitution, immediately declaring it an "obstacle to a lasting settlement" and 12 of the 13 Shiite signatories to the document issued a statement that appeared to withdraw their endorsement.

And after sleeping on it overnight, a council ally of Ayatollah Sistani who is rated as a likely leader of Iraq after the January elections, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, warned of the document's "defects" before he said: "We cannot impose an unelected law on an elected administration."

The biggest Shiite grievance was a massive security blanket for the three Kurdish provinces in the far north of the country.

The clause allows a two-thirds vote in any three provinces (ie, the near-autonomous Kurdistan) to immediately force a new election next year by vetoing the permanent constitution that must be drafted by the new legislature.

Shiites say this is inordinate power for the Kurds, who number fewer than a million in a population of 25 million Iraqis.

The Shiites, with more than 60 per cent of the population, also oppose what they see as a bid to bind next year's elected assembly to a clause in the interim document that bars any changes to it without the approval of three-quarters of the elected parliament and the consensus of the proposed president and two deputies, at least one of whom will not be Shiite.

In an unguarded moment this week, a prominent Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Taqi al-Modaresi, warned that the interim constitution - as written - was "a time bomb that will spark a civil war in Iraq if it goes off".

But when The Age visited the home of Sheikh Mohammed Hussein al-Kinina, a Shiite imam in the inner Baghdad suburb of al-Alawiya, he spoke only of inclusiveness, moderation and humility. Yet, the only adornment in his spartan reception room was a picture of the Iranian fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini.

Told that many in the West saw the ayatollah as an extremist, he replied: "That is only because people in the West do not understand Khomeini."